Hello and welcome to Maximum Customer Experience!

Be like the customer is an excellent addition. And I got a good laugh out of the last subset of that tip: “If the customer is flakey, give them support.” Sometimes those folks are the truest fans you can have because so few people take the time to understand their needs! Well-said!

Regards,

Kelly

Love the post.

I would suggest also to Be like the customer. We all change how we act in different situations, eg we act different at work, and different at home. When we talk to a child we talk different to when we talk to a friend. Likewise, when we talk to a customer we should be like the customer – I mean – be like that individual customer.

If the customer is impatient, talk fast.
If the customer is in for a chat, then chat.
If the customer wants process, give them process.
If the customer is flakey, give them support.

Go beyond empathy, be like the customer.

It’s a cool idea. If you do it, do drop a link here so we can see it!

Graham,

Of course!! Not at all instead of! (Well, not in my mind….) I was imagining them alongside, or in the same dropdown with FAQs, or maybe as bonus-y links from the FAQs, something like that. Don’t Make Me Think is always the first rule. “Give me a smile or a surprise” is way down the list.

As always, you bring up great points.

Until later,

Kelly

It’s only that, bottom line, it doesn’t always work. People aren’t at a website to read lyrical words, they’re there to get their information. Preferably as quickly as possible. If you have a captive audience or if it is a “just for fun” website, then great, come up with all the newest, freshest phrases you can. But if you are trying to sell something (products, services, whatever), it is usually best to make navigation as straightforward as possible.

I’ll stop rambling now…

~Graham

However as you point out Kelly, it is often not used properly. The best policy is to actually include questions you get from customers. Usually there is a large disconnect between the question at point-of-contact with the customer, and actually going to update the website. This seems to be especially if you rely on a web designer/Webmaster to do the updating for you.

Perhaps a solution is to keep a Word document (or a fancy MS Office Note) handy on your desktop so you can add questions as they come up. That way, when you do go to update your website, you have the list at your fingertips.

I’m a little hesitant about changing the name “FAQ” though, I must say. Generally, it is not a good idea to make website visitors think (our good friend Steve Krug taught us that). However SAQ or RAQ might be close enough to FAQ to be a no-brainer. And, as always, it depends on the website — if it is fun AND inherently sticky, changing up names could be intriguing to the website visitor. Definitely some sort of testing should be done before committing to the newer version.

IMHO,

~Graham

Cheers,
C. A.

Absolutely! I definitely incorporate both RAQs and SAQs when writing Frequently Asked Questions. Actually, now that you’ve given them such clever names I’m wondering whether that would be fun to see formally—right IN the menu, of a site with the right sort of humor going on. Wondering whether more people would click on the acronyms they don’t know and learn something cool about the company. Hm, hm. That would be a neat thing to test out!

Regards,

Kelly